Excessively Excessive
The game industry has become obsessed with the idea of "more".
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The game industry has become obsessed with the idea of "more".
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Excessively Excessive
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Arbitrary quantification of complex creative ideas. And to think there's a whole website that you linked to that's devoted to the dreamcrushers. It's mindnumbingly stupid. Like TV Tropes level stupid.
Yahtzee, I was hoping for this debate to be over so we can start being immature again.
DOn't diss the Great, all Powerful God Tv Tropes!subtlefuge said:
That bechdel test is fucking stupid, and so is basically every test that measures the worth of any movie, game, song, or book.
I'm actually really interested in seeing where the gaming industry goes from here. They can't continue the road of excess they've followed since the first home console, because this generation has already become too bloated for its own good. So it's either sink or swim in a new direction.
I'm actually really interested in seeing where the gaming industry goes from here. They can't continue the road of excess they've followed since the first home console, because this generation has already become too bloated for its own good. So it's either sink or swim in a new direction.
No, because that's not the point of The Bechdel Test. It's not some kind of gold star that makes a work of fiction magically feminist or a banner example of equality. There are plenty of works that pass the test and still portray women poorly, and there are many that fail the test that have excellent portrayals of female characters.SpiderJerusalem said:
The Bechdel Test is a simple rough measure of how well-developed female characters in fiction are, how relevant they are to the plot, and how important they are in the setting. Much like body-mass index (BMI) is a simple, effective way of checking rates of obesity across large populations, but can be inaccurate when applied to individuals. If everything a female character says or does exists only in relation to male characters, and this happens in, say, 90% of works of fiction, that's a problem. The fact that a single work fails the Bechdel Test isn't a problem. The fact that so many do is.
You've been keeping count on their views and comments?Jove said:
Extra Punctuation's always been rather more down-to-earth and serious than Zero Punctuation. Sometimes it's funnier than other times, but it's usually more on point than trying to max out on jokes along the way. I don't see that as a problem.
But that's kinda like saying that measuring the size of a head is a rough measurement of brain capacity and or intelligence.Falseprophet said:
As you said, it's not the problem that a single work fails the Bechdel Test. But it's a problem that there are works that PASS the Bechdel Test that don't have well-developed female characters. The more than moderate margin of error in either direction makes the thing useless
You miss a couple of important points. Firstly, stereotyped representations are common in video games (snarling, muscle-bound men with big swords are as familiar as ass-wiggling women), and secondly, one of the biggest problems with the depiction of women relates to the lack of women working in the industry (more women actually working on games would likely result in less stupid depictions of women.)
As an aside, the comment, "it's always difficult to rid ourselves of such basic, instinctual things, in the same way human beings will probably never shake off instinctual racism," is so mind-numbingly ignorant that it's almost beneath contempt.
As an aside, the comment, "it's always difficult to rid ourselves of such basic, instinctual things, in the same way human beings will probably never shake off instinctual racism," is so mind-numbingly ignorant that it's almost beneath contempt.
SHHHH!!!subtlefuge said:
You must be careful of what you say, it might just happen... oh, wait... thats Rule 34. NVM.
I still think people over react to this issue.
Big tits, explosions, gunfire and one liners don't happen in my day to day life, i play games and watch movies to escape, to have fun.
Shamelessly promoting something via sex is questionable, but in the end do those products matter?
We'll remember Half-Life, Assassins Creed, Mario and Zelda, but not Dead or Alive: Extreme... At least not for being a worthwhile experience.
Big tits, explosions, gunfire and one liners don't happen in my day to day life, i play games and watch movies to escape, to have fun.
Shamelessly promoting something via sex is questionable, but in the end do those products matter?
We'll remember Half-Life, Assassins Creed, Mario and Zelda, but not Dead or Alive: Extreme... At least not for being a worthwhile experience.
I've gotta say, I've only recently heard of the Bechdel Test being used in this regard, and I can agree it's stupid.SpiderJerusalem said:
The whole idea of the Bechdel test isn't to "rate" a movie, it was originally just an observation that women don't often get a lot of major roles in films.
And let's face it, that's doubly true for games. I can probably count the number of female protagonists in things I've played recently on one hand, and still have the fingers to factor in gender-optional characters.
It's not necessarily a comment on how feminist something is, but hey, the more female characters we have, the more chance there is to get them done right yeah?
(Remember Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, Cityville, etc.?)
If only it was possible to judge things by more than one standard, or with more than one test. Or to pursue a closer examination of things that came back with a specific result.
[Weighing people is completely useless because it doesn't take into account how tall they are!] - Schrodinger's obesity.
Stupid or misguided(or manipulative) people using statistics poorly doesn't make statistics wrong.
[Weighing people is completely useless because it doesn't take into account how tall they are!] - Schrodinger's obesity.
Stupid or misguided(or manipulative) people using statistics poorly doesn't make statistics wrong.
And yet, those nude named turnip-discussing prostitutes are still more developed and portrayed than most women in movies get. You're still the one sounding derp here because your acting as though the Bechel Test is designed to do more than it claims to do, and your insistence that it's "completely broken" is starting to sound like music and movie genres are completely useless classifications due to a FEW genre-blending songs/movies. Passing the Bechel Test doesn't mean you're movie is fair in its representation of women. But if your movie fails the test, unless there are some REALLY extenuating circumstances (No men either) or technicalities, it doesn't represent women as fairly as it does males. It's mostly an artifact from an earlier time when movies were TERRIBLE with female characters.SpiderJerusalem said:
Also: I'd like to point out that games have been getting MORE modest in their portrayal of the female figure. I've not seen an even semi-popular game recently that features a completely bottomless warrior as a major character, and only one semi-popular hack-and-slash game featuring topless female enemies since Diablo II.
The Bechdel test is just meant to increase awareness of the problem. You have to consider who the intended audience of these "tests" is.SpiderJerusalem said:
It's not your die-hard "anti-Feminists," because they (like any die-hard) don't listen to things. And it's not the folks who are already in your camp, because they're already in your camp. Instead, it's targeting the people who could be receptive.
Know what people listen to first, when getting new information? Simple numbers, and simple rules. It's how we filter things. If it can't be boiled down to simple numbers and simple rules, we generally assume it's meant for people who already know what's going on. That is, not for newbies.
The Bechdel test presents simple numbers and simple rules, which might cause folks to notice, "Wow, it is kind of weird that female characters are so consistently treated in a particular way." Is it simplistic? Overly-simplified, even? Of course it is.
It's also simplistic to tell little kids, "The sky is blue." Sometimes it's one of several other colors, or a combination. But we start with the one they'll see the most often, just to get the ball rolling -- then they can learn all the exceptions as they meet them, by which time they'll be more prepared.
This test is basically about "teaching" people that there's a problem. And there is. And plenty of people genuinely don't realize it, because they've never had the right kind of attention brought to it. So the test tells them, "The sky is blue," or "There is a problem with how female characters are most often portrayed."
The kind of audience that will watch The Diving Bell and appreciate the strong female characters? They're not the sort of people the Bechdel test is targeting. Complaining about how the test applies to things it wasn't intended to measure would be like saying your ruler is broken because it won't give you an accurate weight.
Just because he referred to a broken measuring system doesn't mean his underlying point is wrong guys.
While I agree with Yahtzee that the pursuit of excess is the problem ,I don't really see the situation improving either. After all the underlying problem behind this is that the executives don't get what makes a good game, and given that this problem is common to ALL creative industries ( or rather, executives not pushing for quality as they know that that is an unreliable way to make money) I don't see it being fixed any time soon.
While I agree with Yahtzee that the pursuit of excess is the problem ,I don't really see the situation improving either. After all the underlying problem behind this is that the executives don't get what makes a good game, and given that this problem is common to ALL creative industries ( or rather, executives not pushing for quality as they know that that is an unreliable way to make money) I don't see it being fixed any time soon.
